Birthdays for Grown-Ups

I was invited to a friend’s 28th birthday celebration this past weekend. But unlike in the States, where you’d expect maybe a birthday dinner at a restaurant, and/or drinks at a local bar, the form of celebration was coffee and cake in the late afternoon, at the birthday boy’s apartment. And he had made most of the cakes himself! A group of about twenty gay 20-somethings showed up and sat around drinking coffee, eating cake, talking and listening to music the whole afternoon. After a couple of hours, the coffee was set aside in favor of sekt (champagne) and liqueurs.

What a nice, grown-up tradition. No one had to spend a lot of money paying for someone else’s birthday dinner or cocktails. It was quiet enough to have real conversations. And the cake was delicious. This was the second Sunday afternoon, in fact, I’ve been invited to a young person’s house for coffee and cake in the afternoon since I’ve been in Berlin.

Perhaps this is something to try when I move back home (if I learn to bake first). Of course, at least in New York, this would be more of a challenge. People would always have something else to do, somewhere else to be (the office? the gym? shopping in Soho?).  Here, 99 percent of shops are closed on Sundays, and I don’t know if even law firm associates work over the weekend–meaning no one is in a rush to go anywhere, and people have the time to sit and talk as a Sunday afternoon fades to evening.

Thoughts (and Feelings) After Die Wahl

There were about 30 of us left at the CNN Election Party in Berlin by the time the election was called (5 am local time), mostly Americans, and we high-fived, hugged and cheered along with the rest of the world. Like many people, I watched Obama’s speech while smiling with satisfaction and relief–relief that he survived the endless campaign, that the Bush years are finally at an end, that things are bound to get better.  Relief, too, that this election, unlike the last two, was clear enough to actually be decided on election night, with no talk of recounts.

I left the party around 6:30 am, after the speech, and walked alone along a deserted Unter den Linden, the grandest boulevard in Berlin.  I carried a small American flag that had decorated the election party.  I was proud.

By the next day, I was still proud, but a sadness also began to come over me, as I saw photos and videos and read accounts of the celebrations in Times Square and Union Square, Rockefeller Center and the East Village, Grant Park and Lafayette Park.  It sounds crazy now but it had not once crossed my mind, before the fact, that I would want to be home in the United States for this historic night.  Yes, it was interesting seeing this from abroad.  The election parties had been great–full of Americans abroad, tons of free American food (hot dogs, burgers, chili, donuts, even Chinese noodles) and drink (Miller Genuine Draft!). But I missed sharing in the enormous, public outpouring of joy.

Even though I had been as obsessed with this election as anyone, it wasn’t until after it was over that I realized how much of my identity consists of my interest in and sometime involvement with American politics. There will be other historic elections, but will there ever again be such an eruption of optimism, of solidarity, of simple political feeling in the United States?  It also feels like my country has changed and I was not there to see it.  How has it changed already?  Can you, back home, see a change in people’s faces?  Will New York be noticeably different when I am back in six weeks?

***

One of the interesting effects of the election is that non-Americans I know here have taken to thanking me for voting for Obama, or generally for what my country has done.  It’s a little weird.  Would they have blamed me, too, in 2000 and 2004?  I guess so, though they might not have said it.  That would have been unfair, of course, since I never voted for Bush.  But the thanks also feel strange and inappropriate (even though I did support Obama).

People in Germany (as around the world) followed the election ridiculously closely–I had to laugh last night when talking to a new friend here, who’s originally from New Zealand and has only spent 3 days in the U.S. in his life.  Yet knew almost as much as I did about Obama’s possible cabinet appointments, the shifts in voting patterns this year and other such topics. I had been wondering how much of the scrutiny would cease after the election, but people still seem very interested in what’s going on–the German media have been covering intently whom Obama is going to select to fill his key cabinet posts.

***

So far, Obama seems less presidential, more accessible to me than Reagan or Clinton (forget Bush), and not because he’s not even president yet. Maybe that’s because we are both lawyers who went to Harvard Law.  Or maybe he’s still just a friendly, laidback-seeming guy, despite all the messianic support he engenders.  But most of all, I wonder if this is due to the fact that he is not that much older than I am–a bit more than 15 years.  When you’re young, presidents seem larger than life (as do so many other adults).  When you’re almost the same age, they seem like just another person.  And while Obama and I may not be quite in the same age bracket, by at least one definition I found we are both members of Generation X.

***

One of my first thoughts after Obama’s win was relief about the Supreme Court and the court system more generally, which has been stacked with right-wingers for the last eight years.  I usually find “the courts” a kind of “last resort” reason to vote for a candidate.  But in this time of enormous expectations for Obama, when the challenges facing him and the world are so enormous, court appointments are something concrete, an area in which we can be relatively confident Obama will effect real change.

Indeed, overall I have been tempering my expectations for what Obama can do, and even for how long he’ll be in office.  I remember being elated in 1992 when Clinton/Gore were elected, thinking I would be living under a Democratic President for quite possibly the next 16 years.  This time, even 4 years sound just fine to me, after what we have been through since 2000.  Let’s take one step at a time.

Perhaps the fact that I am living abroad also has something to do with these lowered expectations.  For all the power the American President has, 99 percent of what goes on in the world is out of his hands.  When it’s 6 am in Washington, and President Obama is on the treadmill or getting his first briefing of the day, it will already be 11 am in London, noon here in Berlin, evening in the Far East… the world goes on.

70 Years After Kristallnacht

It is a rainy, mild night in Berlin, 70 years after what is known in English as the “Night of the Broken Glass” – the night, in 1938, when the Nazis destroyed more than 200 synagogues throughout Germany and ransacked thousands of Jewish businesses and homes, murdered 92 Jews and arrested and deported another 25,000-30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps. (The night is called Reichsprogromnacht here, apparently because Kristallnacht, as it is known to American Jews, was the term used by the Nazis and is therefore not considered politically acceptable here.)  This night has always stuck out in my memory/imagination more than others, probably because the image of glass breaking all over Germany is so vivid, so threatening, so foreboding.

A few weeks ago I heard there was going to be a benefit concert in the recently-closed Tempelhof Airport, but caught up in election coverage and other things, I didn’t fully investigate until today—which was too late, since tickets were entirely ausverkauft (sold out). Still, I figured I would show up just to see if I could get a last-minute ticket. The concert sounded interesting not only because of its location inside the Nazi-built Tempelhof, which in the late 1940s was the site of the Berlin Airlift, but also because the program featured a wide variety of musical artists and other performers. It was billed as a protest against violence and as a tribute to civil courage.

By the time I got there, a few minutes before showtime, a crowd of about 25 mostly older Germans was swarming the ticket counter, trying to buy any unclaimed tickets. The entrance hall was decked out for the event, with a red carpet outside, staff in fancy suits and displays by prominent sponsors such as BMW. This was an interesting sight—70 years after the Nazis destroyed Jewish life throughout the country, Germans were clamoring to get into a ritzy concert to commemorate this tragic event.

Unfortunately, I was too late. The few available tickets went to people who were ahead of me on the waiting list. There was one ticket left, for 120 Euro ($150), which was more than I was willing to spend. People who couldn’t get in were angry. One woman, with her young daughter in hand, shouted, “This concert is for rich people!” as she stormed out into the night. A younger woman who had arrived just after I did waited with a small group of older woman, pleading with the woman guarding the door. Meanwhile, I drifted back toward the entrance and watched the raindrops coming down outside as a piano piece began to play deep within the airport hall. Every so often I looked back and saw the women still waiting there, pleading their case, just to see if they had any luck. Finally, it seemed they had convinced the woman to let them in. I tried walking back over to the group to get in as well, but was stopped by a rather unfriendly guard.

“There are no tickets left,” he said, in a particularly unfriendly-sounding German. “You have to leave.” In my own halting German I tried to protest that this was unfair – I had been waiting just as long as those women, and should also be allowed in. He claimed that they had been on a guest list, which I pretty well knew to be untrue. I was tempted to tell him who I was – a Jew, grandson of someone who had fled the Holocaust, who had many family members killed by the Nazis. This would have been inappropriate, of course, but a feeling of injustice and hurt arose in me, and I almost said it.  But the guard started to physically show me the door, and I didn’t fight any further. At least the young female guard who opened the door for me seemed genuinely sympathetic, wishing me “nonetheless a pleasant evening.”

On the bus home, I rued the fact that I had not bought tickets earlier, that I had not gotten to the airport earlier to get on the waiting list, that I had not waited with that group of women who somehow worked their way in. (I have been doing a lot of ruing lately.) But I also tried to put this in perspective. It was just a concert, after all. Although it was a bit unfair that the other women got in while I was thrown out, they had not simply been in the right place at the right time; they had pushed harder than I did. This led me to some unpleasant questions that occasionally cross my mind, especially living in Germany: What would have happened to me, had I been here in 1938 or 1940? Would I have had the wherewithal, the pluck, the luck to survive? Had I been living here then, but not Jewish, would I have resisted? Or would I have kept quiet, cowed into submission like so many millions? This very concert, in fact, was a benefit for a human rights organization named after anti-Nazi resisters.

So, although I didn’t get in, the concert served a purpose for me—making me think about themes of fairness, persistence and commemoration on this sad anniversary.

The New Yorker in Me

I have noticed lately that I get annoyed when sitting in a bus or cab and waiting for the tiniest bit of traffic–even five cars waiting for a red light, which is absolutely nothing by New York standards.

Where did the New Yorker in me go?  Or is that the New Yorker in me?

Decision 2008: On Traumata und Träume

I wish I had started writing commentaries on the view on the American election from here a while back, but as usual I waited for the last possible moment!  So, with less than one day to go on this epic campaign, here are some thoughts on what it looks like from Central Europe.

First of all, there is a palpable excitement about the American election (referred to her as die Wahl).  As an American here, I am constantly asked whether I have already voted (never for whom, I think more because it is obvious than out of politeness).  Needless to say, everyone here is for Obama–from Americans abroad to probably just about every single German.  Then I am often asked what I think is going to happen tomorrow.  I try to gamely answer, but in truth, we are all reading the same coverage and seeing the same data.  I don’t have much new information to offer them–in this day and age, people here know not only the latest poll numbers, but about Tina Fey’s latest impression of Sarah Palin almost as soon as it happens in New York.

As for Election Day itself, there are election parties planned for tomorrow night all over Berlin.  Through my internship I was invited to a party thrown by CNN in conjunction with a few German media outlets.  There is a competing party sponsored by the American Embassy, Deutsche Telekom and a German TV station, which I will also check out.  Perhaps the most lively party, though, will be at the trendy Babylon Theater, sponsored by Democrats Abroad’s Berlin chapter.  Demand for that party was so strong that apparently more than 100 reporters have registered and they sold out advance tickets.  They will even be broadcasting election results on a provisional projection screen on the street in front of the Babylon.

Although the parties all kick off at 8 pm, because of the time change, the signature event of these parties seems to be an Election Breakfast around 5 am (11 pm on the East Coast), presumably around when the winner will be declaring victory–supposing we don’t have a recurrence of the drawn-out elections of 2000 and 2004.

Finally, it has been thoroughly reported how the European media are tracking the race closely and have been all year; I had read back home last winter that newspapers in Germany in particular were covering the presidential primaries zealously, down to explaining to German readers how the Iowa caucauses worked in detail.  Germans remain intensely interested in the intricacies of American democracy.  Case in point – one of German’s leading Sunday papers, the Welt am Sonntag, devoted the first three pages of its main news section this past weekend to coverage of the election, including a giant map showing the latest electoral college projections courtesy of realclearpolitics.com and a lengthy sidebar explaining how the electoral college “works” (since it doesn’t!).

I found two articles in the paper’s coverage quite interesting.  (Incidentally, the fact that I read all of this in German and understood a lot of it goes to show how interest in and familiarity with a subject matter can make reading in a foreign language much more doable!)

The first was a page-long recap of the presidential campaign written by the paper’s Washington correspondent.  From Hillary’s tears in a New Hampshire diner (Schnellrestaurant) to the Huckabee phenomenon, from McCain’s early campaign collapse to Obama’s speech on race, it was interesting to see the campaign in a nutshell – especially from a foreign correspondent’s perspective.  Some of the more interesting bits: the article boiled down the Democratic primary to “blacks against women.”  Oversimplified, perhaps.  The article made a really big deal of Oprah Winfrey’s early support of Obama, suggesting that she was something of a kingmaker.  Overstated, perhaps.  (Also a bit strange, to an American: the paper described Oprah as “der Schwarzen Milliardärin,” or “the black billionaire.”)  The recap ascribed some early importance to the YouTube ad for Obama drawing on the 1984 Apple ad, which I had forgotten about.  And the article noted astutely that the campaign had devolved by its end into a farce, on account of McCain’s sudden embrace of “Joe, der Klempner.”  The author noted (with some sense of wonder at the absurdity of it all) that McCain flew Joe to appearances, seemingly to little avail.

Second, the newspaper’s editor wrote a column on the spectacle and significance of the campaign.   Interestingly, the editor had signed up for Obama’s email list and (like so many Americans I’ve heard complain about this) was annoyed at how many emails he has been getting from Obama’s campaign.  But he also noted that these emails were personal, leading off with “Dear Thomas” — something, I assume, you would never see in Germany, where the political culture (like the business culture) remains more formal.  The writer also reminded readers that while Obama would be the first black president — which he predicted would have a redemptive or cathartic effect for America — Hillary would have been the first woman in the Weiß Haus.  He also commented insightfully that McCain’s choice of Palin for VP “touched upon the tragic” insofar as it made McCain look old and locked up in his body, compared with his “carefree” running mate.

My favorite line of the editorial was its poetic description of the Hintergrundmelodie (background music) of this election as “groß amerkanische Traumata und Träume“–great American traumas and dreams.  In the end, however, the view from here as I see it is that despite the waning influence of the United States as a global superpower, not only distinctly American traumas and dreams are in play and on the line tomorrow, but rather, those of the entire world.

Halloween in Cologne: Not Very Scary

The Halloween party we went to in Cologne turned out to be a lot of fun — it was held in an enormous venue underneath the Hauptbahnhof (central train station) that apparently used to be an old waiting room.  The music was good, there was a big young crowd, and people stayed well into the night.

As for the costumes… well, that left something to be desired.  There was a big discount on the entrance price for coming in a costume (and people in drag got in free), but still, only maybe 10 percent of us there were dressed up.  And those who were in costume were mainly dressed as typical Halloween figures such as blood-smeared murder victims.  I saw none of the really creative costumes we’ve come to expect from “adult” Halloween costumes in the U.S.  Not even a single Sarah Palin!  It seems that Halloween over here is still an undeveloped tradition, with a ways to go before people take it as seriously as they do back home.  (Or maybe they’re just saving up their energy for Cologne’s famous Carnival, which kicks off on November 11.)

A Nice Word (or Two?) in German

The German language is well-known for its many long words that are composites of other, shorter words.  Whereas English takes many of its words from Latin and other tongues, the Germans often build their own compounds from simpler German words.

My German teachers have looked at me funny when I have tried to break down a word into its component parts.  This is understandable; we would too, probably, if a new English speaker pointed out with delight that, say, “gentleman” comes from “gentle” and “man,” or that “highway” comes from “high” and “way.”  We might think, “duh,” or, “what’s your point.”  Perhaps it takes an outsider to really appreciate what a language has to offer.  (This seems to be true with grammar, too, but I’ll save that for another day.)

Here are a few of my favorite examples of German words that are quite interesting and/or insightful when broken down:

• A television here is a Fernseher.  At first I found this to be an awkward and ugly word, compared to television.  But then I found out that broken into its components, this word literally means far-seer, or something you use to see far away – the idea being that a TV allows you to see the whole world on the small screen.  A nice metaphor (if one that, as my German teacher noted, may now be considered somewhat ironic or inapt, given the drivel that fills the airwaves!).

• I have a prepaid cell phone here (which itself is conveniently called a Handy) and when I check how many minutes I have remaining in my account, I am checking my Guthaben (balance), which literally translates to “good to have.”

• One of the main avenues in Berlin is Schönhauser Allee, which translates to “Beautiful Houses Avenue.”  Have you ever seen a street with a blunt name like that in English?

• The Germans have a nice word for being on the way: unterwegs.  Someone who is constantly on-the-go, therefore, is immer unterwegs, or always on the way.

• There is a nice noun for “daily life” or “daily routine” here, simply, Alltag, which seems to be a compression of the words for “all” and “day.”

• One German word for vocabulary is Wortschatz, literally, “word treasure.”

• One who is superstitious is said to be abergläubisch, which broken down means “but believing.”

• When you are at a loss or helpless, you are said to be ratlos, literally, “without advice.”

• The word for existence is Dasein, or, broken down, “being there.”  (Unfortunately, every time I hear this word I think of Dasani brand water.)

• The word for gravity is Schwerkraft, or “heavy power.”

• Skim milk here is labeled fettarme, literally, “fat poor.”

• A wedding is a Hochzeit, or, “high time.”

• To cheat someone is to hintergehen, or literally, to “go behind.”

There are other non-compound words that I really like, too.  For example:

• The German verb for “sounds” is klingen, a wonderful onomatopaiea.  For example, “That sounds good!” is, Das klingt gut!

• “Nonsense” in German is Quatch, which just sounds right.  As do the German words for “bad” – schlecht – and weird or strange, komisch.

I have started to notice that when writing emails to my American friends here, who also speak some or a lot of German, I often now dip into German when it is either more evocative or simply shorter.  (It’s also interesting that the brain seems to calculate this instantaneously, so that instead of writing “on the way,” which has 10 characters, I would use unterwegs, which has nine.)

This is another of the major benefits of learning a new language – you acquire new ways to express the same or similar thoughts, new ways which may be prettier, more accurate or just more efficient, and your freedom and ability to express yourself therefore expand (at least when you are talking to yourself, or others who know the same languages).